Republican Senator Glen Sturtevant is “frustrated” and can’t “deal with the issues that affect (his) constituents” because none of the legislation he champions gets passed through the Republican controlled House of Delegates. In a March 4th Richmond Times Dispatch article titled “As insurers and health care providers battle over surprise billing, Virginia patients remain caught in the middle,” Sturtevant complains that his bill stalled in the House of Delegates even though his own mother has suffered from this practice. www.richmond.com/...
This past General Assembly session he supported a bill that would reduce the cost of balance billing by health insurance providers when patients have an accident or medical trauma that requires a visit to an out-of-network emergency room. The measure passed the Senate but failed to reach the House of Delegates floor. Speaker Kirk Cox failed to allow an up or down vote due to an amendment that was added requiring the House committee to more deeply review the financial impact of the bill.
Senator Sturtevant also championed the Equal Rights Amendment, which passed the Senate only to fail to receive an up or down vote in the House of Delegates. Again, blocked by his own colleagues in the House of Delegates, specifically Speaker Kirk Cox and Majority Leader Todd Gilbert. Interestingly, Speaker Cox represents a different portion of Chesterfield County as Senator Glen Sturtevant.
Over the last four years in the legislative branch, Senator Sturtevant has served on the Senate Courts of Justice committee. This committee, with a republican majority, is where gun violence prevention legislation is heard and voted on. And much to the public’s frustration, killed time and time again. Senator Sturtevant himself has voted ‘nay’ many, many times for common sense gun violence prevention bills such as universal background checks, gun safety storage, limits to purchases of one gun per month, and an assault weapons ban. In 2019 Senator Sturtevant did support a bill for an extreme risk protective orders, also known as a red flag law. However, Sturtevant himself put a poison pill on the legislation requiring a 48-hour deadline in which someone at risk would need to be seen by a judge. The poison pill effectively killed the bill for the session.
To Senator Sturtevant, do you know one of the top injuries that require Virginians to seek emergency rooms out of their insurance network? Firearms injuries. According to the American Journal of Public Health the cost of firearm related hospitalizations was more than $6 billion between 2006 to 2014, with an annual expense of $700 million.* While the senator fails to convince his own party that hospitals and health insurance providers should not balance bill their customers out of network, more patients are forced to seek the emergency room due to gun violence. www.modernhealthcare.com/...
Sturtevant is the only republican to win his liberal leaning district in the last four elections. Hillary Clinton won the district by 12 points in 2016. Ralph Northam won by 15 points in 2017. Tim Kaine won by over 20 points in the last election. While Sturtevant champions’ legislation that is overwhelmingly supported by his district like balance billing by health insurers, or the Equal Rights Amendment, he is ineffective in working with his own Republican colleagues to see it passed. When his constituents are begging him to buck his own party and vote against the NRA, he fails us again. What good is he to the voters in the 10th District of Virginia? It appears Sturtevant is unable to effectively pass legislation even though his own party controls both chambers of the General Assembly.
Two excellent female candidates are seeking the 10th district democratic nomination. Dr. Ghazala Hashmi hashmi4vasenate.org/..., and attorney Eileen Bedell https://www.bedellforvirginia.comwill run in a primary set for June 11, 2019.